Star Trek: The Next Generation - A Klingon Challenge
Star Trek: The Next Generation - A Klingon Challenge was a video-based board game for three to six players and produced by Decipher in . It was released mainly to capitalize on the flood of "VCR board games" many game companies released at the time. The video footage of the game was filmed on the actual TNG sets, and the material was vague enough that the game played differently every time. The game was produced in the US by Decipher, but marketed for the UK and European markets by Milton Bradley. A follow-up, Borg Q-Uest, was planned but never released. Premise and gameplay A renegade Klingon named Kavok (played by Robert O'Reilly) has hijacked the . The ship has a skeleton crew aboard (the players), as it was at a starbase undergoing repairs, including a warp core instability that has caused relativistic anomalies during warp travel. The crew has sixty minutes – possibly less because of the warp core troubles – before the ship reaches Klingon space and Kavok uses it to start a new Federation/Klingon conflict. As the video plays, the crew (players) move around the board trying to obtain five isolinear chips they can use to reprogram their tricorders and reach the bridge to stop Kavok. However, Kavok knows the players are trying to stop him, so he jumps in from time to time to force players to make certain moves or draw certain cards. If a player can get all the needed chips, access the Jefferies tube to the bridge and stop Kavok before time runs out, they win the game. In the event that no players win, the Enterprise is destroyed (footage from is used to illustrate the Klingon Attack). After the destruction, a title card reveals that the Enterprise passed through a temporal causality loop. The players can rewind the tape and play again to avert the disaster. Cards Holodeck - holographic simulations of the Enterprise crew offer advice. Players usually receive a benefit or bonus from this advice. Bij (Klingon for Punishment) - Players experience a forfeit at the top of the card. In the event of a "systems malfunction" immediately after a declaration of Bij the player receives the positive bonus at the bottom of the card, much to the dismay of Kavok. Stickers A series of adhesive-backed stickers come with the game; rank insignia to represent the order of play (highest rank goes first), the Commbadges the players must use and the player who stuns Kavok receives a sticker medal. Other items Stasis fields - plastic tubes put over player tokens when said player is in stasis. Bridge tokens - the final tokens before a player wins. When it is the players turn, they reveal the caption "you stun Kavok", in which case they win, or "Access Denied" in which case they must wait a turn and try again. Trivia Most of the foreign (non-US) versions of the game featured a black background for the box art, rather than white background used for the US release in the photo above. Jonathan Frakes sets the scene as William T. Riker in an opening log entry. Riker is not seen on screen. Images of Kavok were later used for game cards in the Blaze of Glory expansion for Decipher's Star Trek Customizable Card Game First Edition. See also These Trek-related games with a video element (VHS tape or DVD): *Trivial Pursuit - Star Trek Edition VCR Game *Star Trek: The Next Generation - Borg Q-Uest *Star Trek Scene It? Klingon Challenge, A